


At the foot of the sky

by Snatchfer



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Caring, Cooking Lessons, Demigod TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Gen, Gods, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Kinda, Piglin Hybrid Technoblade (Video Blogging RPF), Recovery, Sparring, Valentine's Day Fic Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:14:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29431524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snatchfer/pseuds/Snatchfer
Summary: So Tommy sits and mediocrely chops stalks, tells himself that he is doing it alright, and listens. He listens to all the quiet of the world, and all the quiet in their little room in Techno’s little cottage. Smoke in the jaws of friendly flames, broth bubbling at the edges of its pot, the sloping wind through carved walls.Most importantly, he listens to the veryalivenessthat built its home within Techno; another being, who can think and talk, just like Tommy can. This is the real difference between the quiet that sometimes tempers him, in moments like these (the quiet that followed him from exile like incendiary fetters), and the quiet that Techno offers, freely given. Freely taken.Because sometimes, even when the moments are quiet, Techno speaks.///Tommy is a god, true. But he is also a kid, and kids need help sometimes, too.
Relationships: Technoblade & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 234
Collections: Completed stories I've read, MCYT Fic Rec, TWB Valentine's Event [2021]





	At the foot of the sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fiery_phoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiery_phoenix/gifts).



> Not 100% satisfied with this, but I love the concept. Thanks for the prompt, shrub! I hope you like it!!

Most gods do not change. Most gods are so eagerly and thoroughly themselves, that they do not have to. 

Most gods do not change - that is the function of mortals - but what if the very nature of your existence means to be changed? After all, the purpose of learning has always been to adapt new knowledge.

* * *

Tommy’s hair hasn’t always been blond.

It’s not like he forgot, or anything. Not really. It was just so irrelevant for so long - because he’s blond now, and that’s what matters. Most people know him as blond - he knows _himself_ as blond. It’s just such an intrinsic thing within him that he forgets to remember, sometimes.

So - well, maybe he did forget a little.

And then one day he remembers; just as the sun’s frosty glance darts over twinkling snow and poaches the icy pond of its dainty blue, turning the downtrodden grass gold with its burnt orange light. Frigid wind frolics bitterly between trees and sweeps dusty snow from glittering planes, speckling his face with cold. His nose and ears sting, his eyes go dry.

He catches sight of a warped reflection in a frozen mirror.

It was brown before, he thinks - his hair. Must have been. A warm auburn, or maybe a shade darker; like rough spruce bark, with ridges deep enough to dig your fingers into - or coffee brewed under firelight, beneath a blanket of starry contemplation. The kind of brown that grew from bodies or the ground up.

Wilbur’s brown.

His mittened fingers fumble with his fringe, chattering against his forehead and casting stringy shadows against the ice. He only knows a few people who are blond; knows fewer still, who are this shade of _dark_ blond.

In the same way that Tommy is blond - so is Dream green. Chartreuse green, sickly green; the green gleaned from poison, or the venomous breath from earth of warped wart. (Green like leaves in summer, fluttering as butterfly wings would, or sun-dappled grass under sturdy boughs; green like the scent of rosemary tea and pine tree resin and warm hay). Green is - it’s Dream’s colour. 

But it is not Dream’s only colour. He bears a white mask about his face, made from something strong and hardy. He wears brown boots, decorated with sun-dried leather and furred soles. His armour is the kind of black that saps the light from the air.

Most of all, Dream’s hair is blond.

His hair is _Tommy’s_ blond.

Remembering anything that compares the two summons forth, without fail, a bundle of complicated feelings in his chest; a tangled weight nestled between his ribs and diaphragm. In the bludgeoned mess where his heart used to sit, he feels pride swell like the rounded bellies of sweet fruit. (He feels sick to his stomach, and aches for his hair to turn brown again.

In the eye of his mind, squinting between shadowed carcasses; he sees a smile caught between breaths; solid hands hewn from music and skin; the curls that folded behind ears and over brilliant eyes).

When he opens his eyes again, all he sees is his own face. Blond, blue-eyed. A crooked grin, filled with too many teeth to be what Wilbur had, surely. His scalp sits all wrong over his skull. His teeth - 

He blinks, peering down at himself. 

His teeth are blunted, like a normal human’s. Molars and incisors and bicuspids and canines. Mostly, they all look the same. Mostly, they are flat, and built for grinding leaves and fruit and vegetables. Mostly, they look well.

He prods at his gums, which are inflamed and achy. Originally, he’d thought it’d just been the cold, but maybe… maybe it’s something else.

“Tommy!” A rough voice calls through the hollow sound of wind pooling between mountains. “Hurry up - a storm’s coming.”

Technoblade’s blurry shape approaches from a distance. This far away, he is just a moving spot of blue and pink, but it won’t be long before he’s close enough to see what’s taking Tommy so long. What a thing to explain to the great Technoblade.

He forces his jaw closed. It’s probably nothing.

* * *

The second time he notices that something is going on with his teeth, he is sitting with Technoblade in the kitchen of the cabin, feet up on the wooden chair opposite, and they are making stew. Or - Techno is making stew. Tommy is complaining about making stew while doing a fine job of _chiffonading_ \- Techno’s word, not his - stalks of greenery into messy heaps.

It’s a mostly quiet kind of a moment. They happen a lot more than they probably should, and a lot more than Tommy is altogether too used to. Still, there are times when Tommy cannot bring himself to fill the silence, and Techno has never really been the type to be able to efficiently take control of that window of opportunity.

So Tommy sits and mediocrely chops stalks, tells himself that he is doing it alright, and listens. He listens to all the quiet of the world, and all the quiet in their little room in Techno’s little cottage. Smoke in the jaws of friendly flames, broth bubbling at the edges of its pot, the sloping wind through carved walls.

Most importantly, he listens to the very _aliveness_ that built its home within Techno; another being, who can think and talk, just like Tommy can. This is the real difference between the quiet that sometimes tempers him, in moments like these (the quiet that followed him from exile like incendiary fetters), and the quiet that Techno offers, freely given. Freely taken.

Because sometimes, even when the moments are quiet, Techno speaks.

“What are you doin’?”

“Uh - nothing!” Tommy tears his hand from his mouth, where the fingers were pulling at his teeth; an unfortunately thoughtful habit. He wipes his palms off on his trousers and pretends he doesn’t still feel the canines sitting wrong in his mouth. “Nothing, nothing, nothing.”

Techno levels him with a dry look. It’s the kind of face he wears when he’s concerned, but doesn’t really know how to show it. Tommy grins back to alleviate the pressure, and only catches himself a second too late. He switches to a close-lipped smile instead.

They stare at each other for a few too many heartbeats. “I didn’t punch you too hard, did I?”

Tommy swallows. “No, no! This was a different fight. And I totally won that one, anyway.” He forces out a chuckle, because they both know that he did not win their last sparring match. It doesn’t seem to accomplish much. Techno’s lips are kind of always downturned like that. “Uhuh… I can be done now, right?”

“Alright, well…” Techno sighs. He looks deeply unimpressed. “If you knock your teeth out, just tell me, okay?”

Nodding, Tommy backs away. “Sure!” He scurries away down the ladder to the basement and slips the stone slab back over the hole. When he finally drops to the ground, he breathes a sigh of relief, and pushes his teeth around a little more. They click against their neighbours until he leaves them be, somehow unable to find a comfortable position.

He spits on the ground, expecting to see blood, but there is only the empty, dull ache in his jaw. Who knew the process could be so painful?

He’s used to new colours growing in, or spots showing up, or freckles plucking themselves from patches of sunshine. He’s used to hair sprouting curly, or fingernails going angled or sharp or blunt.

He’s picked up a million and one little things from as many people as he’s met. He’s picked up all his favourites from the people who took the time to teach him them.

Never once has he grown new, huge teeth.

 _Tusks_.

It doesn’t usually hurt quite as much.

* * *

Tommy inhales, and feels the breath of winter enter his lungs. If he had to compare it to anything, he’d call it invisibility potion vapour. Fresh, sharp, cold - something rich and earthy beneath it all. More than that, he smells - woodsmoke, blinking iron, worn leather.

Looming above them, the sun glares down from just above the treeline, sending blinding rays bouncing off of everything pale and white. Tommy squints from behind makeshift goggles, while Techno takes advantage of the forest’s shade. 

On the exhale, he darts forward. Technoblade stands with parted feet and a solid grip on sword and the ground beneath his boots. When he swings, Techno sweeps the blade from underneath and launches the handle from his grasp in one, with the serrated edge. After that, the fight doesn’t last much longer, but he at least manages a few decent hits.

“This is unfair,” he whines between gasps. His eyes are closed so that he doesn’t go blind from the sun, so he almost misses it when Technoblade offers him a hand up. “Why can’t we use axes? And the sun was in my eyes the _whole_ time!”

Only once they’re both on equal footing does Techno deign a response; the most eloquent of shrugs. “If you don’t want the sun in your eyes, get past me and turn the fight around. It’s not my fault you’re bad.”

“That’s such bullshit!” Tommy snaps, sparing barely a moment for the internal spiral in which he agonises over how Dream would have reacted to such backtalk. He’s so distracted, in fact, that he says his next words on autopilot: “You’re supposed to teach me!”

The world goes white and still under the illusion of an epiphany. Blindsided, Tommy almost retracts the objectively true statement out of hand - what does Techno have to teach, anyway? It’s not like Tommy cares that much about him or his fighting.

But both of those things are untrue, and whatever it is that is alive in the world seems to know it, too. The trees seem to gaze down at the two of them knowingly, and the river beyond his sightline burbles with the words of superlative gossip, and the wind holds its breath, for whatever that may be worth. Something whole and alive and larger than even Tommy’s puny perception can acknowledge, peppers him with the weight of wily scrutiny.

The air is heavy enough that Tommy can physically feel it settle upon his shoulders; the burden of a teacher acknowledged - not just by the student - but now by whatever powers that be. Tommy can feel it below his skin, in the rippling centres of his marrow.

(His teeth ache).

But for all his talents, Techno is the only one to exist on this plane that doesn’t seem to notice. Or maybe it’s just that he doesn’t care. Tommy can’t say he knows which is worse.

In fact, he seems more concerned with something else entirely. “Tommy, are those your teeth?”

Tommy blinks at him for what feels like a century of a second. Slowly, he watches the tape reel back (as his mind returns from skies and trees and suns that sit alive with all their ancient knowing, as if they know anything about Tommy at all), and shuts his mouth. The instant he does, he feels two hard things loose against his tongue, and instinctively spits them out.

A moment too late, they both realise the mistake. For Tommy, this starts with the increasing taste of blood rising from his gums and the bed of his mouth, and ends in the type of mouth-numbing pain that sends his brain into hazy disarray. For Techno, it’s the low-simmering anxiety of not being quite sure what to do with himself. “Are you bleeding right now?”

“Sure,” Tommy agrees dazedly. He spits a gobful of blood in the snow; a third red patch to match the other two. “I just spat out my teeth.”

“I didn’t even punch you in the face that time!”

 _It’s fine,_ he wants to reply, if only to release the pressure from the air (as if that pressure were coming from the two of them, and not the staggering weight of Old Gods’ putrid attention), _I’ve been growing them out for weeks. They were bound to pop out sometime_.  
But all that comes out is a sharp groan, and then the world turns to darkness.

* * *

Tommy is not the god of much. He’s young, and he’s new, and he’s still trying to get to the bottom of himself. It’s a matter of learning. It’s a matter of deep diving, really. He’s a well of libraries, filled with books, filled with information - and maybe that’s the thing that really makes it fun to be himself. Because he has never felt so pleased as to crack the mystery of himself.

He is not the god of much. That is to say, he is not so deeply the god of sun as the sun god is a god of itself; it is an Old God, a sun. It is the most sunniest sun to ever exist, and everything it does will always be something that a sun does, because it is so intrinsically and innately a sun.

Tommy is Tommy. Everything that Tommy does, will probably be a Tommy thing to do. The difference is that Tommy things will change everyday, or even every hour of every minute of every second of every moment.

Tommy is the god of every small thing he has ever known. And he is the god of every large thing, too. Stringing a bow, raising carrot shoots, aiming a snowball so that it melts down the back of someone’s neck; strumming a guitar and saddling a horse and (handing over things when it’s expected of him) chiffonading green stalks into messy heaps.

Tommy is the god of not a lot, really. Tommy is the god of many little things, only a little. Most importantly, he is the god of learning them.

Point is, Tommy is fairly used to the side-effect gig of being a god of ever changing. This is the one and only reason why, when he wakes up next, he finds himself unsurprised to find two stubby little teeth poking uncomfortably into his upper lip.

The rhythmic sound of knife on wooden chopping board pauses.

The air is thick with warmth from heated wood and stone. The fireplace in the corner thrums heavily with its baritone cheerfulness - something about the fire in Technoblade’s house has always been friendly. Perhaps it has something to do with never being truly burned by it, or maybe it’s just the contrast between how dark it is outside already.

“What?” He finally breaks out, filling the already full air with new weight.

Technoblade, whose previous fervour with the knife would indicate some level of aggression, sounds just as calm and undeterred as ever. “Funny hybrid ability you’ve got there,” he mentions, finally moving into view as Tommy sits up. “You’d think I’d have known about it.”

Tommy inhales briefly, thinking over his options. It’s never been exactly an instinctive thing, to tell people about the nature of his existence. It’s never really been necessary, either. He’s just one of the weird things that exist in the worlds. “Known about what?”

“Well,” Techno begins, his dark eyes peering into Tommy’s own. “You’ve essentially grown up with Phil, and we’ve known each other for about as long. Plus, you don’t exactly come across as… hybrid.”

For all Tommy’s little bits and pieces, he does look fully human, and that is true enough. But they also both know that growing tusks out of nowhere is a distinctly nonhuman activity.

Tentatively, he runs his tongue over his new teeth, which are still crusted with blood. He swallows the taste slowly, considering its flavour in his mouth and finding that it does not come across as sickly and disgusting as it did before.

“You’re gonna wanna put your top lip underneath them - no, uh, behind.” Techno directs, his own lip demonstrating behind his tusks. Tommy’s are not quite so large, and still manage to poke uncomfortably at his lip, but the position is a bit better.

He tongues at the dry surface of the teeth exposed in open air. “Will they get bigger?”

“I don’t know,” Techno replies, leaning into the wall behind him. “Will they?”

Tommy’s mouth clamps shut. _Probably_ , he thinks.

Technoblade sighs. “So what is it, then? We both know you’re not a hybrid.”

Tommy sinks into the sofa, bringing cushions down with him. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to say the truth.”

“There isn’t much to it.”

“I don’t care.”

Tommy sputters a half hearted bout of laughter. “It’s not like it’s a huge deal, or anything - ”

“Tommy,” Techno cuts him off. “Are you a god, or not?”

Air catches in Tommy’s lungs. He sits in silence for a moment, peering past Techno, into the fire. Hoping to find some sense of comfort in there, or maybe just a bit of reassurance. Nothing too much.

He clears his throat. “More like - um. More like god _ling_.”

“Well, obviously.”

“H - what? Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?” He snaps.

Techno chuckles, and leans over to sit on the sofa next to him. His long legs pile up on the floor, his hooves thumping where they land. His face is unreadable, despite the small grin tugging at his lips and the lilt to his ears. Maybe Tommy’s just overthinking, but Dream’s face had _always_ been cheerful.

“It means that you’re way too young to be a god just yet.”

Tommy flounders for a moment, barely remembering all of the past moments filled with tension, where Techno had cracked a joke to loosen the weight. His cheeks flood with warmth. “Wh - did you just call me a _child?_ ”

It’s the kind of joke Wilbur would have made, and Tommy wonders if Techno knows that, too.

“I just called you way too bad at fighting to even begin to be a threat to me.”

Tommy thinks that he probably does.

**Author's Note:**

> If it wasn't clear, most gods are kind of static, while Tommy is literally the god of learning and therefore change. He also picks up physical traits from the people he learns from, and the most important relationships he has are the relationships he has with his teachers, the most significant of which was previously Wilbur.
> 
> Techno knows about gods bc he is on close terms with the blood god


End file.
